2017-01-02

Notes.

Anyone out there know someone in/near NYC working at the intersection of tech and neuroscience? If so, holler - I have a friend looking for someone who can speak on the subject.

Planning & Strategy.

• Farsoon Technologies, the Chinese manufacturer of industrial printing systems, launched their metal system in the US.
• Faraday Future's IP is all owned by a separate company in the Cayman Islands.
• Bicycle manufacturing is trickling back to the US.
• I'm reading The House of Morgan, a history of the family of JP Morgan companies.
• GE is divesting from their desalination and industrial solutions businesses.

Making & Manufacturing.

• "2017 is the Make-or-Break Year for Tesla's Gigafactory."
• A good overview of the various methods to manufacture plastic parts.

Maintenance, Repair & Operations.

• Perhaps the biggest risk in Iraq right now is an engineering & maintenance one. The Mosul Dam, which Saddam Hussein built in the '80s, rests on a bed of soluble rock; the ground around the dam contains gypsum, which dissolves in water and leaves cavities. If it fails, the fallout would be existential for both Mosul and Baghdad. Preventing failure requires continuously pumping concrete into the cavities that constantly form around the dam.
• A DoD SBIR project to put seeds in side training rounds.

Distribution & Logistics.

• Amazon is working on an Uber-like app to connect truck drivers with cargo. With their huge shipping volume and history of productizing internal capacity, this seems like a natural move.
• A short piece on the Sealed Air company, and the prevalence of air cushions in e-commerce packaging.
• An analysis of the business performance of public water infrastructure around the US.

Inspection & Testing.

• The James Webb Telescope showed some anomalies during vibration testing, but NASA says that the structure is sound.
• A full teardown of Apple's AirPods. They're put together entirely with glue, and the lithium batteries inside are impossible to replace - and extremely difficult to recycle.
• SpaceX says that the September 1 explosion was caused by oxygen buildup between layers of a LOX composite pressure vessel.
• By firing an laser pulses at a nanowire, researchers in Switzerland were able to photograph light as both a wave and a particle.
• The NYTimes' favorite NYC architecture of 2016. Note the last project, a vent tower in Greenwich Village, and the writer's apparent preference for Robert Moses style extravagance in public works.

Tangents.

• The Tamam Shud case, which happened in 1948 in Australia, is a pretty fascinating unsolved murder. The victim, who had a scrap of paper (from the Rubiyat) that read "tamam shud" on it, was never identified, and the cause of death is unproven.
• Benjamin Franklin, purveyor of fake news all the way back in 1782.
• What a balloon's pop tells us about the end of the world.

Credit to Zach, Jim, Jonas, and Reilly for sending links this week. If you see something, send something :)

And.

Everlane's "Our Factories" page.